Revisiting Gender Training

Revisiting Gender Training is concerned with the thinking behind gender education and training rather than with day to day practice. It explores the explicit and implicit assumptions in gender training about the nature of knowledge (epistemology), about how knowledge is imparted (pedagogy), and about knowing (cognition). The book brings together case studies at country, regional and global level to look critically behind the practice. Jashodhara Dasgupta examines whether the primarily 'political' nature of the feminist project has been unobtrusively dismantled by the language and tools of development in India, including the use of gender training. Josephine Ahikire analyses gender training in Uganda, post-Beijing Conference, and the ways in which it has changed over time. She focuses on the point where international imperatives meet the national context, and considers the impact of gender training on the feminist intellectual and political project. Lina Abou-Habib considers gender training in the Machreq/Maghreb region in the Middle East and North Africa. She highlights the transformatory potential of such training, and the ways in which it has dealt with patriarchal mindsets and institutions. Claudy Vouhe discusses the conditions and factors that limit or strengthen the impact of gender training. This contribution is the output from an international conference on gender training in the French-speaking world in 2006. Shamim Meer explores the power of rights-based development approaches for advancing ideas and action for social change, including change to unequal gender power relations. Starting with experience in South Africa, she teases out the particular understandings of rights and agency, and reflects on a methodology for linking reflection and action through starting from the personal. Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay and Franz Wong introduce the book and establish its focus on gender training and feminist epistemology, its tone of critical reflection, and its aim of looking beneath the surface of much of the day to day 'gender' activity and considering the assumptions made about of the links that exist between knowledge, attitudes, behaviours, and practice. An extensive and up-to-date annotated bibliography of international resources (print and online) makes this a truly global sourcebook on the topic. Book jacket.

This book develops a case for feminist gender training as a catalyst for disjuncture, rupture and change. Chapter 1 traces the historical development and current contours of the field of gender training. In Chapter 2, the key critiques of gender training are substantively engaged with from the perspective of reflexive practice, highlighting the need to work strategically within existing constraints. Questions of transformative change are addressed in Chapter 3, which reviews feminist approaches to change and how these can be applied to enhance the impact of gender training. Chapter 4 considers the theory and practice of feminist pedagogies in gender training. In the final chapter, new avenues for gender training are explored: working with privilege; engaging with applied theatre; and mindfulness/meditation. The study takes gender training beyond its often technocratic form towards a creative, liberating process with the potential to evoke tangible, lasting transformation for gender equality.

This book provides a critical and decolonial analysis of gender and development theory and practice in religious societies through the presentation of a detailed ethnographic study of conjugal violence in Ethiopia. Responding to recent consensus that gender mainstreaming approaches have failed to produce their intended structural changes, Romina Istratii explains that gender and development analytical and theoretical frameworks are often constructed through western Euro-centric lenses ill-equipped to understand gender-related realities and human behaviour in non-western religious contexts and knowledge systems. Instead, Istratii argues for an approach to gender-sensitive research and practice which is embedded in insiders’ conceptual understandings as a basis to theorise about gender, assess the possible gendered underpinnings of local issues and design appropriate alleviation strategies. Drawing on a detailed study of conjugal abuse realities and attitudes in two villages and the city of Aksum in Northern Ethiopia, she demonstrates how religious knowledge can be engaged in the design and implementation of remedial interventions. This book carefully evidences the importance of integrating religious traditions and spirituality in current discussions of sustainable development in Africa, and speaks to researchers and practitioners of gender, religion and development in Africa, scholars of non-western Christianities and Ethiopian studies, and domestic violence researchers and practitioners.

After more than a decade of practice, gender training is no longer the preserve of the original advocates, the international women's movement: it is widely recognized by governments, international donors, non-governmental organizations and United Nations' bodies as an important tool for gender-aware transformation of institutions and societies. Gender training: the source book reviews experiences of gender training practitioners in a broad sense, including those involved in gender education and training, as well as research.

As gender training is applied increasingly as a development solution to gender inequality, this book examines gender inequality in Pakistan's public sector and questions whether a singular focus on gender training is enough to achieve progress in a patriarchal institutional context.

Do women have a history? Did women have a renaissance? These were provocative questions when they were raised in the heyday of women’s studies in the 1970s. But how relevant does gender remain to premodern history in the twenty-first century? This book considers this question in eight new case studies that span the European continent from 1400 to 1800. An introductory essay examines the category of gender in historiography and specifically within premodern historiography, as well as the issue of source material for historians of the period. The eight individual essays seek to examine gender in relation to emerging fields and theoretical considerations, as well as how premodern history contributes to traditional concepts and theories within women’s and gender studies, such as patriarchy.

The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Agriculture covers major theoretical issues as well as critical empirical shifts in gender and agriculture. Gender relations in agriculture are shifting in most regions of the world with changes in the structure of agriculture, the organization of production, international restructuring of value chains, climate change, the global pandemic, and national and multinational policy changes. This book provides a cutting-edge assessment of the field of gender and agriculture, with contributions from both leading scholars and up-and-coming academics as well as policymakers and practitioners. The handbook is organized into four parts: part 1, institutions, markets, and policies; part 2, land, labor, and agrarian transformations; part 3, knowledge, methods, and access to information; and part 4, farming people and identities. The last chapter is an epilogue from many of the contributors focusing on gender, agriculture, and shifting food systems during the coronavirus pandemic. The chapters address both historical subjects as well as ground-breaking work on gender and agriculture, which will help to chart the future of the field. The handbook has an international focus with contributions examining issues at both the global and local levels with contributors from across the world. With contributions from leading academics, policymakers, and practitioners, and with a global outlook, the Routledge Handbook of Gender and Agriculture is an essential reference volume for scholars, students, and practitioners interested in gender and agriculture.

This book casts a light on the daily struggles and achievements of ‘gender experts’ working in environment and development organisations, where they are charged with advancing gender equality and social equity and aligning this with visions of sustainable development. Developed through a series of conversations convened by the book’s editors with leading practitioners from research, advocacy and donor organisations, this text explores the ways gender professionals – specialists and experts, researchers, organizational focal points – deal with personal, power-laden realities associated with navigating gender in everyday practice. In turn, wider questions of epistemology and hierarchies of situated knowledges are examined, where gender analysis is brought into fields defined as largely techno-scientific, positivist and managerialist. Drawing on insights from feminist political ecology and feminist science, technology and society studies, the authors and their collaborators reveal and reflect upon strategies that serve to mute epistemological boundaries and enable small changes to be carved out that on occasions open up promising and alternative pathways for an equitable future. This book will be of great relevance to scholars and practitioners with an interest in environment and development, science and technology, and gender and women’s studies more broadly. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351175180, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.